On 12/8/2016 12:24 PM, Marc Schwartz wrote:
Dimitri,
Even if you narrowly define "safe" as being virus/malware free and even if the
CRAN maintainers have extensive screening in place, the burden will still be on the end
users to test/scan the downloaded packages (whether in source or binary form), according
to some a priori defined standard operating procedures, to achieve a level of confidence,
that the packages pass those tests/scans.
As you know, virus and malware are moving targets and there are so-called "zero
day" exploits, which means that even actively updated virus and malware scanning
software can be defeated.
With respect to the security issue you raised, to the best of my knowledge, no
CRAN packages are tested for such exploits (it would be an impossible task to
extensively check for overt, much less covert channels of communications) and
that again, would be a local issue. CRAN packages are, of course, not the only
potential source of such exploits, as we know.
As Bert noted in his reply, even the official R distribution comes with no
warranty, and that will be the case with most OSS.
Will an organization like RStudio provide some sort of testing
service -- for a fee of course?
Spencer
Regards,
Marc
On Dec 8, 2016, at 12:08 PM, Dimitri Liakhovitski
<dimitri.liakhovit...@gmail.com> wrote:
Thank you, Marc.
That's helpful!
I think, in this case it's mostly:
That they are virus/malware free.
And that they don't send out some info that they are not supposed to.
Thank you!
Dimitri
On Thu, Dec 8, 2016 at 1:04 PM, Marc Schwartz <marc_schwa...@me.com> wrote:
On Dec 8, 2016, at 11:47 AM, Dimitri Liakhovitski
<dimitri.liakhovit...@gmail.com> wrote:
Guys,
suddenly, I am being asked for a proof that R packages that are not
'"base" are safe. I've never been asked this question before.
Is there some documentation on CRAN that discusses how it's ensured
that all "official" R packages have been "vetted" and are safe?
Thanks a lot!
--
Dimitri Liakhovitski
Dimitri,
You are going to need to define "safe".
Also, note that the notion of "official R packages" is not defined, other
than for those that bear the copyright of The R Foundation (Base +
Recommended), as per:
https://www.r-project.org/certification.html
That packages are available on CRAN does not infer, implicitly or
explicitly, that the packages are endorsed/certified/validated by any party.
You can review the CRAN Policy here:
https://cran.r-project.org/web/packages/policies.html.
which provides a standardized framework for CRAN submissions.
Does "safe" mean that they are virus/malware free?
Does "safe" mean that they are extensively tested/validated, bug free and
yield documented evidence of consistent and correct results, possibly having
also been tested for "edge cases"?
Regards,
Marc Schwartz
--
Dimitri Liakhovitski
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